Critical strike

Whenever you use a skill or attack, you have a chance to deal a Critical Strike.

Critical Strikes are rolled on a per-action basis, not per-monster. So each time you use a skill, the Critical Strike roll is made once and only once. If you roll a Critical Strike, you will deal Critical damage to all enemies hit by the skill. Struck enemies cursed with Critical Weakness can cause an initial roll that comes up non-critical to potentially become a critical strike.

Critical Strike Multiplier

Critical Strikes do more damage than normal, based on your Critical Strike Multiplier. All characters have a base Critical Strike Multiplier of 150%, meaning a critical strike does 150% of normal damage. This multiplier can be increased with various passives and items.

Monsters have a default Critical Strike Multiplier of 130% which can be increased by various affixes and monster auras.

This multiplier will be applied to all damage types of a hit. For instance, with a multiplier of 250%, if you deal a Critical Strike with an attack that normally does 100 physical damage and 10 cold damage, you will instead deal 250 physical damage and 25 cold damage.

The stat found on items and passives is applied as a percentage of the base Critical Strike Multiplier. This means will result in a 300% Critical Strike Multiplier. (150% + 100% of 150%)

Critical Strike Chance

The chance to deal a critical strike is taken from the weapon used to perform an attack or attack skill, and in the case of spells, each spell has its own critical strike chance, which is listed in the skill gem's description.

This value can be increased by increased critical strike chance modifiers from spells and gear. For example, if you are using a weapon with 5% chance to crit, and you have 50% increased critical strike chance, you will have a 7.5% chance to score a critical strike.

Critical chance can not be less than 5% nor more than 95%.

Critical Strike Chance and Critical Strike Damage Multiplier are calculated separately for each spell and weapon attack. All weapons and damage-dealing spells have a base Critical Strike chance listed on them. This only affects your chance to critical for attacks made with that weapon or spell. For instance the critical strike chance on a wand does not affect your chance to critical with a spell.

Weapon Critical Strike Potential

An exhaustive list of weapon base crit chances. Weapons with higher than 5% base crit chance highlighted.

Weapon	Range	Hands	Critical Strike Chance
			Min	Max
One-Handed Axes	Melee	1	5%	5%
Two-Handed Axes	Melee	2	5%	5%
Bows	Ranged	2	5%	5%
Claws	Melee	1	6.2%	6.98%
Daggers	Melee	1	6.2%	7.28%
Sceptres	Melee	1	6.5%	6.98%
One-Handed Maces	Melee	1	5%	5%
Two-Handed Maces	Melee	2	5%	5%
Staves	Melee	2	6.5%	6.68%
One-Handed Swords	Melee	1	5%	5%
Rapiers	Melee	1	5%	5%
Two-Handed Swords	Melee	2	5%	5%
Wands	Ranged	1	8%	8.96%

Spell Critical Strike Potential

An exhaustive list of the base crit. chances for spells which do on-hit damage. This list excludes Auras, Curses, etc. which do not damage and also have no crit. chance.

Spell	Base Critical Strike Chance
	4%
	5%
	4%
	5%
	4.5%
	5%
	5%
	4%
	5%
	4%
Discharge	8%
	6%
	5%
	6%
	5%
	5%
	7%
Incinerate	0%
	5%
	4%
	4%
Tempest Shield	6%

Critical Strike Passives

Basic Critical Strike Passives are:

• 3 x Critical Strike Chance (20%)
• 15 x Critical Strike Chance (15%)
• 13 x Critical Strike Multiplier (10%)

Notable Critical Strike Passives are:

• 1 x Assassination (40% Increased Critical Strike Chance, 20% Increased Critical Strike Multiplier)
• 2 x Bloodthirst (45% Increased Critical Strike Chance)
• 1 x Mental Acuity (30% Increased Critical Strike Chance, 20 Intelligence)
• 4 x Cruelty/Heartseeker/Throatseeker (30% Increased Critical Strike Multiplier)

For a total of 39 Critical Strike Passives granting 445% Increased Critical Strike Chance, 250% Increased Critical Strike Multiplier and 20 Intelligence.

Other Passives affecting Critical Strike

Other Passives affecting Critical Strike include Critical Strike for Spells Passives, Dual Wielding Passives, One-Handed Melee Weapons Passives, Two-Handed Melee Weapons and Specific Weapons (Bows, Claws, Daggers, Staves, Maces, Swords and Wands) Passives.

Effect on DPS

Ignoring Accuracy/Evasion and Armour, the DPS contributed by critical strikes is

net DPS = base DPS + base DPS * base Critical Strike Chance * (1 + increased Critical Strike Chance) * (0.5 + 1.5 * increased Critical Strike Multiplier)

• With no increased Critical modifiers, 1% base critical strike chance corresponds to 0.5% increased damage from criticals.

The marginal net DPS with respect to increased Critical Strike Chance is

marginal DPS = base DPS * base Critical Strike Chance * (0.5 + increased Critical Strike Multiplier * 1.5)

• At a typical base Critical Strike Chance of 5% and no increased Critical Strike Multiplier, 100% increased Critical Strike Chance corresponds to 2.5% increased damage from criticals.
• With 100% increased Critical Strike Multiplier, this increases fourfold to 10% increased damage from criticals.

The marginal net DPS with respect to increased Critical Strike Multiplier is

marginal DPS * base Critical Strike Chance * (1 + increased Critical Strike Chance) * 1.5 * increased Critical Strike Multiplier

• At a typical base Critical Strike Chance of 5% and no increased Critical Strike Chance, 100% increased Critical Strike Multiplier corresponds to 7.5% increased damage from criticals.
• With 100% increased Critical Strike Multiplier, this doubles to 15% increased damage from criticals.

Note that this does not take into account effects such as status ailments.